<i>Shutting the mine could eliminate more than seven thousand jobs, in a county of thirty-seven thousand people. “Greene County will become a ghost town,” the neighbor wrote.</i><p>Isn't that the normal fate of towns built around resource extraction after the resource is economically exhausted? The American West is littered with ghost town remnants around depleted mines. It doesn't make much more sense to stay in a coal mining town in Someplace, Appalachia after the coal is gone than to stay in a silver mining town in Someplace, Colorado after the silver is gone.<p>I saw similar grievances from dying logging towns when I was growing up in the Pacific Northwest. The flashpoint was government action to protect the remnants of old growth forest that the endangered Spotted Owl lived in. The underlying problem was that loggers were exploiting old growth forest faster than it could regenerate. Deregulation wasn't going to make their way of life sustainable. You can't extract what isn't there any more.<p>If the residents of these coal-centered towns can find a way to reinvent the local economy to <i>not</i> depend on declining mines, that's great. I wish them luck with that. But most probably won't. We need to prepare to help people transition to other regions and other opportunities when the mines are no longer making money and the towns around them no longer prosper.
So, when I look at what Norway has done with its oil money, I wonder what prevented communities like these from doing the same thing. Removal of the coal from the ground generated excess value, otherwise the mines would have lost money and been closed already. Where did this excess value actually flow? Did the community actually capture enough of the value flow to change its fate? Or did it only capture enough to survive, and now since that value flow is ending so does its survival?
Trump says he is going to bring back coal as a part of his program to make America great again.<p>But the reason America was so great is that it was at the leading edge of technological change. That is relevant because in the 19th century, coal was the hot new technology. It was used for powering factory machines, electric generators, railroads and steam boats, heating, and producing steel.<p>But technology continued to advance, and coal has gradually been replaced. It survives today only for steel production and part of electric generation, and even there it is being replaced by gas and renewables.<p>So when Trump wants to revive coal, he is going backwards technologically, and that would mean losing out in the global economy, too.<p>Any Trump defenders want to disagree?